


the wrong, wrong, wrong way to tell you i was drowning

by nosecoffee



Series: One of a Kind [8]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Angst, Character Development, Clones, Companion Piece to One of a Kind, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lots of OC's, Orphan Black AU, RIP Yorick, Takes Place After Chapter 93, wont make sense without context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-20 22:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16563944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: Jared slams his laptop closed. And then opens it again, so quickly that the image is still displayed on the screen before it goes black. That image is ingrained into the back of his eyelids.He feels like he's going to throw up.Jared has a fleeting moment to wonder if the Murphy's have seen this yet, how they'll react to seeing their sons face on a dead guy's exposé.(Or, Jared's not having a great time, and Beanpole just needs help, okay?)





	the wrong, wrong, wrong way to tell you i was drowning

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "I'm Not Falling For That" by Drew Gasparini
> 
> This has been in the works for a while, but the publication of the One Of A Kind sequel slammed me with a truck of inspiration, so here we are. Hope you enjoy!

Jared is just staring at his laptop screen, trying not to actually fucking scream, or something. Because this cannot be happening. Because if this is happening it's probably his fault.  
  
Because if this is happening, Jared could have stopped it by keeping his nose out of Yorick's business. Just saw his familiar face in the crowd and kept walking.  
  
Or even if he'd still invited Yorick up to his hotel room so that he wasn't sleeping on some park bench somewhere, and just not called Evan to freak out about this random guy looking fucking exactly like Connor Murphy.  
  
It just.  
  
It can't be happening.  
  
Jared slams his laptop closed. And then opens it again, so quickly that the image is still displayed on the screen before it goes black. That image is ingrained into the back of his eyelids. Yorick with the top of his skull sawed off, brain exposed to the world and the eyes of God (though Jared doubts quite a lot that God exists if that could happen to Yorick and there was no divine intervention to make it fucking stop).  
  
He feels like he's going to throw up.  
  
Not only can he not believe that that is a thing someone could do to another living person, he can't believe someone would have steady enough hands to provide a photo.  
  
Jared has a fleeting moment to wonder if the Murphy's have seen this yet, how they'll react to seeing their sons face on a dead guy's exposé. The article was posted a day ago, so if they haven't seen it yet, it's a miracle. The thought is gone as quickly as it came.  
  
When he opens the computer back up, swallows the vomit that climbed to the back of his mouth, and begins to read, he finds the article itself reads very emotionally, as if the author of it was writing it for the sake of Yorick, a lot of anger in them to expel. The author is named Miranda Gosse.  
  
A quick google search reveals that to be derived from the French, but used commonly in Swiss-French areas. Jared remembers Yorick saying his birth mother lived in Switzerland.  
  
The rest of the article details the torture Yorick was subjected to, and Jared barely keeps anything down, persevering through the article because no matter how painful it is to know what the guy he barely knew went through before he was finally killed, it's nothing compared to the pain he went through and the pain his family is going through, right now.  
  
Jared closes the tab as soon as it's done. He takes a chance and rings Evan's number. Straight to voicemail. All Jared has is questions, and can't convey them properly through voicemail. He hangs up.  
  
More googling, pulling a few favours, and luck, and he manages to obtain Miranda Gosse's number. She picks up on the third ring.  
  
"Hullo?" Jared is mildly shocked at the thickness of her accent.  
  
"Hi, uh." He replies. "My name's Jared Kleinman, am I speaking to Miranda Gosse?"  
  
A pause. "Why do you want to know?" Not a no, so he takes it as a yes.  
  
He takes a deep breath, "Because I want to apologise."  
  
"For what?" The confusion in her voice is palpable. Jared almost wants to hang up there and then  
  
"The loss of your son." He forces himself to say.  
  
"Oh." A single word shouldn't sound so horrible. The tone of her voice when she next speaks is too flat, too shut down. "It was unavoidable."  
  
"I'm afraid it wasn't." He says, and bites his tongue. Jared hates when his mouth gets ahead of him, but this might actually be his undoing, if that article is true, if all of this is true, if those people who took Yorick decide that Jared knows too much...he shakes the thought away and clears his throat, continuing, "Again, I'm very sorry for your loss, but I have a question, and I'm hoping you might have an answer for me."  
  
"I rarely have the answers." Miranda Gosse tells him, tiredly. Jared nods to himself, he's sure she believes that.  
  
"We'll see." He says, instead of something sensitive and sympathetic like, I understand. He can't understand. "Can you tell me why your son looked identical to a boy I knew, in high school, who killed himself?"  
  
A long silence. Jared feels as though he's hit the jackpot.  
  
"I don't see why that's any of your business, if any of that nonsense is true." Miranda Gosse tells him, voice calm but sharp. A warning. _Get out, now. Danger, do not cross this line._  
  
"Ma'am, I know something bigger is at work, here," he swallows, the image of Yorick yet again flashing through his mind, and then a better image, Yorick smiling at him at the bar, laughing at something dumb. There's a reason he's come this far. "I just don't want to go in blind."  
  
"You don't want to have anything to do with any of this, I assure you."  
  
"I want everything to do with this."  
  
She pauses. She's still there, he can hear her breathing on the other end of the line. Jared worries, minutely, if maybe end gone too far, hurt her, crossed a line that should not have been crossed, but then that's always been his way, hasn't it? Then, abruptly, Miranda Gosse asks, "How did you know Sandy?"  
  
"I met him in Buenos Aires.” Jared swallows. “We grabbed a few drinks, I let him stay in my hotel room, and after a bunch of negotiation, we were both sent to Boston and I never saw him again."

"Oh, god." The word _god_ sounds way closer to a sob than a word, and that's what forces the next words from Jared’s mouth.

"I'm so sorry.” He says, honestly, gripping the hotel quilt cover in his hand, crumpling it inside his fist. “I _never_ would have brought him there if I knew what they were going to do."

"You couldn't have known.” Miranda Gosse tells him, emotion in her voice. Jared clicks on the tab for her article and scrolls down until he finds links to all sorts of other articles about the facility that killed her son. “How much do you know about DYAD?"

"Next to nothing.” Jared admits and closes the lid of his laptop. He doesn't want to read any more of it. “I know what you outlined in your article, and I know what I saw when I was in the facility. But other than that, I couldn't tell you anything about it."

"You _went_ to the facility?" She questions, suddenly urgent.

"Yeah." He replies, cautiously, wondering what rabbit hole he's thoughtlessly tossing himself down, now.

"You're probably deeper than I thought.” Miranda Gosse mutters to herself, and there's some shuffling noises on the other end of the phone before she continues,  “What did you say your name was, again?"

"Jared Kleinman." He answers, dutifully.

"How'd you like to attend a meeting in Johannesburg with me?" She asks, and Jared can't help the whiplash he feels from the emotion of talking about Yorick’s death to the frankness in her invitation to visit _Africa_. This is his dead friend's grieving mother. What the fuck is his life?

Nevertheless, he finds himself replying, "What's the meeting for?"

"We're forming a new DYAD, a better DYAD.” From what Jared knows of DYAD, he doesn't think there should be a new DYAD at all, but Miranda Gosse, a woman whose son was put to death by them, seems to be committed to this cause, so really what leg does he have to stand on? “DYAD with standards."

Jared considers what he has going on for himself now, wonders if he'll go back to sleep and wake to find this has all been one big fucked up dream. The chances seem low, he's considering the offer. "If I come to this meeting, will you tell me what the hell happened?" Really, that's the only thing he wants right now.

"Everything will be explained." Miranda Gosse promises him, and that's honestly good enough.

"Alright then.” Jared sighs, and glances around his mess of a hotel room. “I need to get my finances in order."  
  
~  
  
He meets Miranda upon entering her hotel room in Johannesburg. She paid for the  flight and his accomodation, so the first thing he does upon arriving is go to the room number she texted him up his arrival at the airport. She's a tall woman with brown curly hair, green eyes, and broad shoulders.

Jared is really not sure what he's doing here. Knowing she was Swiss was something, but when she asked him to come to _Johannesburg_ he had a lot of doubts. he slept in nervous, short lived bouts on the plane over.

And now she's standing there, looking fragile and unbreakable at the same time, a small black woman standing behind her.  
  
"Jared, I presume?" She says, and holds her hand out to him, to shake. She pronounces his name like "Jah-reed" and he's not going to correct her.  
  
"Miranda," he responds shaking her hand, and then peers around her at the small black woman, glancing at him through the thick lenses of her clunky glasses.  
  
Miranda sees them staring at each other. "Lili, this is Jared. Jared, this is Lili."  
  
Jared goes to shake her hand and finds hers full of toddler. A two year old girl with lighter skin than hers sits on her hip and stares at him with big hazel eyes.  
  
"Oh, wow," and then, for lack of anything better to say, "nice baby."  
  
Lili frowns and turns to Miranda, speaking rapid French. Miranda smiles in kind. Jared can only remember the basics of his French education and still does not pick up on a single word they say. Lili laughs at whatever Miranda says, and then frowns, looking ridiculously sad.  
  
"This is Lili's daughter, Sandy's goddaughter." Miranda tells him, gesturing to the toddler on Lili's hip.  
  
"They were close?" Jared asks, holding out a hand to the little girl, and watching her inspect him as one would inspect mud on the carpet. She buries her face in her mother's shoulder and Jared nods to himself. Seems about right.  
  
"Yes. My son grew up in Ontario, but after graduating high school came to visit me in Switzerland. He and Lili bonded very quickly, and he went travelling the world, until he found out Lili's boyfriend had abandoned her because she was pregnant and came back to help her through it. My son sent her money from the trust fund we had saved so he could go to college.” Jared feels sick. There’s so much he didn't know about Yorick, so many kind things he did, and now he's gone. “Her name is Gaelle."

Jared is very bad with children so he just nods to Lili. “Uh, go you?” She laughs, almost surprised, and he narrows his eyes at her. “Can you speak English?”

Lili suddenly looks put out. “He ruined my game.” She pouts at Miranda, and this time it's Miranda’s turn to laugh.

“Lili has been teaching herself English for many years now, but she likes to pretend she doesn't understand English speakers. Don't worry, she wasn't doing it to tease you.”

“How nice of her.” Jared grits out, half-annoyed, half-amused. Lili shrugs and pokes her tongue out at him, like they're five.

“Sandy’s brother should be joining us any minute.” Miranda says, quietly, and Lili suddenly sobers, clutching her daughter tighter to her chest.

"I thought Sandy was an only child?” Jared says, confused. “Brother?"  
  
The hotel room door opens behind him, and before Jared can turn to see who entered, Lili bursts into earnest tears, staring at something over Jared's shoulder. Jared turns, quickly, to find himself standing face to face with another Connor Murphy, with shorter hair and glasses, wearing a polo top and khakis.  
  
"Oh, what the _fuck_." He says, and the other Connor Murphy sighs.  
  
~  
  
"CLONES?" Jared cries. Charles looks very tired. Lili's gone to put Gaelle down for a nap, and Miranda's sitting on the couch, beside Charles.  
  
"Yes, that's what I told you.” Charles sounds exhausted, and Jared honestly can't get over how he looks like Connor but talks like Hugh Grant in _Notting Hill_. (Literally, upon entering the hotel room, he tripped on the carpet and yelled _whoopsie daisies._ ) “There's hundreds of us."

"I knew it, I fucking knew it.” Jared mutters, and something clicks in his head. “Oh my god, he totally knew and that's why he wasn't shocked when he saw Sandy, he _totally knew_ about the clones."

"Sorry, who?" Miranda asks, sounding less tired than Charles, but more confused. Charles looks almost bored with Jared’s pacing and muttering.

"Just a friend of mine who worked for DYAD.” Jared replies, waving an absent hand as he goes over it. Evan had looked shocked, yes, but only when he was telling him about Yorick's headaches. Not at Yorick’s face. “I wonder when he found out. I wonder if he told _Zoe_."

Suddenly, Charles perks up like a deer in the headlights. He looks pale. "Zoe Murphy?" He asks, quietly.

"Yeah, what the fuck.” Jared says, nodding, and taking off his glasses so he can pinch the bridge of his nose. “Do you _know her_?" God, how fucked would it be if Zoe knew Charles, the awkward British Clone of her brother?

"Well, yes." Charles admits, awkwardly, and Miranda rolls her eyes at him. Jared wonders how she can look at him without bursting into tears. He's identical to Yorick.

"Okay, I have so many questions, but I have a call to make." Jared says, and pulls out his phone.

"Who to?" Charles looks mildly alarmed, halfway out of his seat. Right, they probably don't want trade secrets out in the open. Unfortunately they don't have a leg to stand on after Yorick’s exposé.

"My friend who worked at DYAD." It goes straight to voicemail. "Oh, come on, turn your phone on, you absolute prick." He waits for the tone. "Evan Hansen, I swear to god if you don't turn your phone on this instant and answer me, I'll fly to Boston and bludgeon you over the head with a tree branch."  
  
"Evan Hansen?" Charles repeats, looking pale and queasy.  
  
Jared hangs up the phone and frowns. "Yeah."  
  
"He's in recovery." Miranda says, gravely.

That sounds Very Not Good. Recovery? "Recovery from what?" Jared asks, not sure that he actually wants to know.

"We took down DYAD a few days ago, but he took a bullet to the stomach in order to protect Gus Sadler." Charles replies, and his mouth sets back in a thin line when he finishes.

"Who's Gus Sadler?" The name sounds significant, the way people say the names of important historical figures, the name of a person who's important to a cause.

"You're not worried about Evan?" Charles looks confused.

"He fell out of a tree in Senior year and broke his arm, and after lying on the ground, for an hour, waiting for someone to find him, he drove himself to the hospital. He'll be fine.” Jared knows he sounds cruel even as he speaks. He can't care, right now. “Now, who's Gus Sadler. Is he a clone?"

"Yes.” Miranda replies, not looking bothered by Jared’s brutal candor. “And more importantly, he's one of the twins."

"Wait, twin clones?” Every word out of this woman’s mouth is another mystery yet to be unsolved, and Jared isn't sure whether he loves it or not, yet.

"It was an anomaly. Each clone was implanted via IVF, but somehow Gus and his twin happened.” Miranda explains, getting to her feet and crossing the room to the window. She's very elegant, so Jared thinks she can get away with monologuing while gazing out the window at the buildings surrounding them, outside. “We've also discovered that they birth have unique healing abilities. They can heal at ten times the normal rate of humans."

"So...super clones?" Jared asks, suppressing a smile.

"Sure.” Miranda agrees, and Charles gives her an irritated glance. She shrugs and adds, “But Gus is a dog groomer with a constant craving for donuts."

"That...is beyond the idea of a mood." Jared says, without anything else to say.

"Jesus Christ." Charles moans into his hands.

"What's the other clone's name?"

"This may come as a shock to you." Charles warns him, emerging from the safety of his palms.

"How?" How can literally anything they say to him now shock him?

Miranda exhales through her nose and says, "Gus's twin is Connor Murphy."

Jared can't help but stare. "But Connor Murphy's _dead_ ." He says, slowly. "He OD'd on sleeping pills on a park bench at the start of senior year, and got a weird haircut. Alana Beck tried to start a fundraiser in his memory but her tech glitched out on her. He had Evan's therapy letter in his hoodie pocket and everyone thought it was his suicide note."

Miranda and Charles exchange a look. They seem to be communicating solely with their eyes. "That wasn't Connor." Charles eventually says.

There's a chill running down his spine. "Then who was it?"

"A clone from New York, Ben Childs.” The words register slowly, sluggishly. Jared’s only half listening, remembering how everyone at school was talking about how Connor had cut off all his hair before he died. “Connor's been masquerading as him since the beginning of senior year."

"But Evan said he was boning Ben Childs- oh my god,” it hits him in a flash, “Evan's been fucking _Connor Murphy_."

Charles’s cautious expression shuts down into something vaguely amused, masquerading as annoyed. "What are you, twelve?" He asks, looking like he's holding back hysterical laughter.

"I'll do you one better,” Jared says, vaguely, “I'm a _dick_ ."

~

Celine Loa is the director of the Johannesburg branch of ERAS - what they're calling New And Improved DYAD - and Jared has an overwhelming feeling she doesn't like him.

“Don't worry,” whispers a small woman in slacks and a cardigan, beside him, “she's just not a fan of new recruits. Gets all suspicious.”

Jared arches an eyebrow at her. He doesn't know this woman, but he's seen her talking to Charles a bunch over the last few hours they've been milling in the meeting room of the hotel they're at. She's a head or two shorter than Jared with brown hair and a round face. She's really rather pretty, and Charles quite clearly has it bad for her.

“I'm not a new recruit,” he whispers back, and takes a sip of his instant coffee. It always tastes burnt, why didn't he expect it to taste burnt? “I'm here for Miranda.”

“Ah,” the woman nods. Charles is gazing at her with hung-the-moon-and-stars eyes from across the room, and Jared rolls his eyes so obviously that Charles notices, goes red, and looks away. “Well, she wouldn't like you much, right now, anyway.”

“I think I missed your name.” Jared says, instead of continuing their conversation. “I'm Jared Kleinman.”

“Tina. Tina Cameron.” She offers him a hand and he shakes it, amicably. “I was a receptionist with DYAD for a while. Joined Beanpole’s secret resistance group once I figured out exactly how shady they were.”

Jared frowns and sips more of his burnt instant coffee. “‘Beanpole’?” He questions, curiously.

“Our dear Charles Booth. Didn't you know?” Tina looks up, registers his amused expression and rolls her eyes. “That's what all his Clone brothers used to call him when he was undercover collecting info on the illegal cloning project. Kinda stuck, I guess, though he doesn’t like to advertise this nickname.”

“I love that.” Jared tells her, earnestly. Tina shoves him by the shoulder and he laughs, trying not to spill his coffee. Their conversation pauses briefly as Charles wanders over, under the guise of making himself some instant coffee, and Tina explains to him that putting the milk in before the water makes it taste less burnt. Jared tips his own instant coffee out upon hearing this and resorts to eating them cream filled biscuits the snack table.

Tina follows him over, and they're standing there, idly munching on cream filled biscuits, when she says, “You're that guy Miranda was talking about. The one who was close to Yorick?”

Jared freezes up. “I wasn't close to him.” He replies through gritted teeth. “I knew him for a day, at most.”

“But he trusted you.” Tina insists, picking up another chocolate biscuit made to look like an Oreo.

“Yeah, and he shouldn't have.” He says, staring at the ugly carpet. “I'm the reason he's dead.”

“You can't believe that,” she says, and the din of the rest of the conference around them is getting louder somehow. Tina puts a hand on his shoulder and Jared barely stops himself from flinching. “You can't blame yourself.”

“If he had never met me, he wouldn't have gone to DYAD and they wouldn't have cut his head open.” He says, as calmly as possible. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe he should have just fucking stayed in that hotel room in Buenos Aires. Maybe he should have slept on the offer to come to Johannesburg and then turned it down in the morning. “It's that simple.”

“I get you feel guilty.” Tina’s tugging him away from the snack table, out of the room, Jared thinks he sees Charles’s gaze follow them and his smile fades a bit, but that doesn't matter. Tina just keeps talking, “But if I was in your position, if I didn't know all I know about DYAD and I thought they could help, I'd do the exact same thing.”

“Guess that makes both of us idiots.” Jared says when they emerge into the hallway, the air cooler, the chatter from inside muted.

“Ignorance is not idiocy.” Tina informs him, and leans against the wall, opposite him.

“It's not exactly bliss, either.” He points out, and wishes he'd never met Yorick.

Jared slides down the wall and ends up sitting on the scratchy carpet, staring at his hands, resting on his raised knees. Tina follows him down. “You say you weren't close to him, and yet his death is taking this much of a toll on you.” She says, softly. There's biscuit crumbs on her cheek. “Why do you think that is?”

Jared puts aside his guilt, the blame he placed on himself the moment he saw Yorick hooked up to that IV back at the DYAD facility, and looks at the floor. “Maybe I'm just over people with his face dropping dead around me, you know?” He says.

“Yeah,” Tina agrees softly, grief in her tone. Jared doesn't have time to unpack that. “I do.”

~  
  
"How are you?" Jared asks Lili, later that night. Miranda left them to their own devices after taking them out for dinner, following the conference. Charles came to get him and Tina when it officially started up, and Jared pretended not to notice when they awkwardly made a thing out of the crumbs on Tina’s cheek. They're both so obvious about their feelings, yet so oblivious about each other's feelings. Jared kinda wants to smoosh their faces together yelling _now kiss,_ but he thinks he'd feel bad if he did.

Lili doesn't talk much, he's noticed. She only really speaks when spoken to, which he guesses must have made her and Yorick really close friends, as Yorick liked to fill silences, and all Lili seems to possess is silence. Silence and a daughter who’s currently sleeping in Jared’s lap.

She nods and smiles at him, but the look in her eyes is grim. The TV is playing Bob the Builder, but it's muted, and has been muted since about five minutes after Gaelle fell asleep. She's sitting on the other end of the hotel room couch, head propped up on her hand. “I…” she begins, and then an expression of frustration and broken concentration slides onto her face, like she's trying to find the words to explain how she feels. “I am sad. Yorick, I miss him. He was a good friend, a good person.”

"He was a good friend to me too." Jared responds, speaking softly and slowly, so she can understand him and so he doesn't wake up Gaelle. Gaelle’s hair is straighter than Lili’s tight, dark locks, and a little lighter as well. "I didn't know him that long, but he was...yeah, he was good."  
  
"He helped me, when I was sad. When I was troubled.” She breathes in, deeply, through her nose, eyes drifting closed for a moment. “When I made a mistake."

"You mean Gaelle?" Jared broaches, carefully.

Lili grimaces, but she doesn't say no. She must have only been eighteen, maybe less. Jared can't even begin to imagine what she's been through, how Yorick’s help and support must have been invaluable. "He helped me when I knew." She says.

"Where was the father?” Not really his business, but Lili isn't likely to open up to him if anyone else is around, so maybe this is his best bet to get to know Yorick’s best friend. “Gaelle's father, I mean."  
  
Lili says something sharp in French, something that sounds like an insult. "He’s not around." She says in a nearly disgusted tone. “He hasn't been around since before I knew about Gaelle.”

A long silence. They both stare at the muted screen for a bit, and Jared wades through his thoughts like they're made of honey, difficult, slow, unnerving. Everything about the situation he's in just gives him more questions. All he has is questions.

"Why did it have to be him?” Apparently, all Lili has is questions, too. “Why not anyone else?"

Maybe if he had answers he wouldn't feel so guilty about it. "Because he was sick,” Jared says, methodically. That's why he brought him to DYAD, and that's the reason they found him useful enough to saw his fucking brain open, nevermind that Yorick was a living, breathing human with hopes and dreams. That's why his fist is clenched in a hotel cushion when he adds, “and they were monsters."

"Monsters." Lili repeats.

"Yeah.” Gaelle shuffles in her sleep, and they both turn to look at her. Hadn't Yorick said, on the plane to Boston, that he'd been thinking of just going home to Switzerland, for a while? That he just wanted to be home, he just wanted to be with the people he loved? Jared knows it's not his business, but he wonders why Yorick never mentioned Lili and Gaelle when he was talking about his family. “I'm sorry."

Lili stares at her daughter with resolve in her eyes.

“I think Gaelle knew when Sandy was gone, when he died.” She tells Jared, softly, unprompted, as she reaches out and strokes Gaelle’s hair, gently. “She cried for hours, and, when we got the news, she just cried harder. She used to do that, sometimes, especially as an infant, and I think Gaelle knows each time one of Sandy's brothers dies."

Jared frowns. “Why would she know that?” He asks.

Lili looks up at him with an uncertain look in her eye, takes a deep breath and murmurs, “Because she might be his.”

~

The next morning, Jared is leaned over a bowl of cornflakes that have long gone soggy, staring into space, when Charles sits down in front of him with a plate of toast and a big, wide smile on his face. “Good morning,” Charles practically sings, and everything about him screams that he truly believes it is a good morning. Jared, in comparison, feels like he’s been run over by around fifteen emotional dumpster trucks, and then sworn to secrecy about all of them.

Jared surveys his companion slowly and nods, faux-approvingly, before returning to running his spoon through his soggy cornflakes. “Someone’s cheerful.” He comments, lowly.

“You’ve _no idea_ .” Charles agrees, happily, opening a travel jam container and scooping some onto his butter knife. “The conference is going _so well_ , I’ve got so many people on board with this project, it’s insane how quickly this is all going.”

“Well done.” He means it, he truly does, he just feels so worn out, so burdened down, so useless that his tone does not convey it.

“Jared?” Charles probes, carefully, some of his suniness fading. “Are you feeling well?”

"I can't stay here.” Jared says, instead of answering his question. Charles looks taken aback. He sets his jam-dirtied knife down on the edge of his plate, eyebrows narrowed, mouth half-opened to reply. Jared interrupts before he can say anything, “I'm not helping any of you. I'm just asking questions that you've already answered so much, I feel like I'm just here to - to - I don't know? Replace your brother?"

The sympathetic look on Charles’ face fades in a moment, replaced by something close to offence. Charles never met Yorick, and yet he looks angry at the thought that Yorick could be replaced. Dully, Jared wonders how easy it would be to swap some clones and have them assume the others life. "Then why did you come here, Jared?” Charles questions in the most harsh tone Jared has ever heard him use. “Far as I know, you were having a _merry old_ _time_ in Buenos Aires, and then suddenly you were here."

"I don't know how to help.” Jared insists, and taps the length of his spoon against the edge of his bowl, creating a sharp, rhythmic ceramic noise. “I _want_ to, but...I barely understand what anything you guys are talking about means, so I doubt I'm of any use at all."

"You want to help." Charles echoes, flatly.

"Yeah. I feel like it's the least I could do.” Jared admits, quietly, picking up a spoonful of cornflakes and letting them slip back into the bowl with vague disgust. “ I mean, I basically led one of your brothers to his death; I don't know how to stop feeling guilty for that."

"You couldn't have known what they'd do."

"He never would've ended up at DYAD if it wasn't for me. He would still be alive, today. No one was monitoring him. The only reason he even ended up with DYAD was because I called up an old friend who _just happened_ to be _working for them_ .” That’s the worst part, he thinks. The fact that if he had called up Zoe or Alana instead, hell, even Heidi maybe all of this could have been avoided. It had to be Evan, didn’t it? Of all people, he had to call Evan, just because the idea of freaking him out, of sharing his own freak out was too good to pass up? “I don't know how I'm supposed to get over that. Miranda doesn't have a son anymore because of me. Lili's best friend is dead because of me. I'm _not helping_ here. I'm just hurting people. That's all I do."

"That's not true." Charles refutes.

"Okay then, tell me, what else have I done?” Jared gestures to Charles to explain and Charles gives him a near-helpless look. “Hm?"

"Lili trusts you." Charles deflects, almost like it’s the only good thing he can think of to say about Jared right now, and that makes a broken kind of laugh bubble up Jared’s throat.

"No, she doesn't.” He replies, still kind of laughing. “She just cried on my shoulder because I talked about how great her best friend was for a bit and she misses him."

"What do you _want,_ Jared?” Charles says, sharply, so sharply, and his voice kind of cuts off on the last syllable, like it’s not used to being so harsh, like _he_ wasn’t expecting _himself_ to be so harsh. “Why did you come here?"

"I told you; to be useful."

"So _be useful_.” Charles says, voice softening, changing, colouring. “Help me."

Jared narrows his eyes at him, remembering the last time someone asked for help, Evan’s face all pink with anxiety and embarrassment. Like, that had turned out _great_. "With what?" He asks, cautiously.

"You're good with computers aren't you? Tech design? That kind of thing?" That kind of comes out of nowhere, but he shrugs and nods anyway.

"I mean sure."

"That conference, the reason you're here? I'm trying to form an organisation that will help people like Yorick and I, people who were experiments but became their own person, and have now been outed as the world's most widespread illegal experiment. I think I'm going to need a non-invasive way to keep track of them. A way for them to opt in or out of our plan to keep them safe from people who'd seek to harm them. I think you're just the man to help me."

"And once that's done?” Jared raises his hands and then lets them slap back down on the surface of the table. “I can't _stay_ here."

"I don't think you should, either.” Charles says, and takes a thoughtful looking bite of his jam-spread toast. He continues through a mouthful of bread, that Jared’s sure he wouldn’t do if he was less sleep-deprived, “I'm setting up in Boston. Maybe you could come."

Jared’s already shaking his head when Charles says _Boston._ "America's not exactly my happy place, right now, especially Boston."

"What about going with Miranda and Lili back to Switzerland?" He suggests, and Jared forces back more hysterical laughter. _Switzerland?_

"Switzerland?" Charles shrugs. "I don't speak a _lick_ of the languages they speak there. How would I buy milk?"

"What else would you do?” Charles asks, and _that_ stops Jared short. He’s got a point. What _would_ he do? Back to Buenos Aires, once again? Waste away in a hotel room, somewhere? Go home with his tail between his legs, admit he was wrong? Wallow in guilt? “Plus, if you stay with Miranda you both could keep track of how our networking goes, stop us if we go too far, keep us from making the mistakes DYAD made before us."

"You really trust me with that?” Jared asks him, seriously. For the first time in his life, he feels unsure. “You barely know me."

"At this point, Jared,” Charles chuckles without humour, “I don't really know who to trust."

The choice is an easy one to make, but in the end it’s the idea that doing this might actually mean he isn’t wasting his life that makes him say, "Well, not like I’ve got anything better to do. Let’s give it a go.” Charles smiles.

 

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please leave a comment to let me know all about it, and hmu on Tumblr @nose-coffee. Make sure you keep an eye on the main story, and follow the One Of A Kind Tumblr page for updates, because the main story is so good. Thanks for reading!


End file.
